A Midsummer Night’s Dream

After the Dark, the ‘Dream’

Julie Taymor and ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’

Published: October 17, 2013

As the director Julie Taymor started imagining her new production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” she made two choices early on: She wanted children to populate the fairy world, and all the fairies to stay earth-bound. “I had no interest in flying,” she said. “That was definitely something I didn’t want to do.”

Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times

Julie Taymor and Andrew Sotomayor work on the makeup of David Harewood, who plays Oberon in Ms. Taymor’s staging of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at Theater for a New Audience in Brooklyn. More Photos »

Ms. Taymor, who has directed the most successful musical of all time (“The Lion King”) and perhaps the most troubled (“Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark”) said she knew just how time-consuming creating flying scenes can be — and presumably, also, how much can go wrong. But over time she warmed to the idea; for the grand entrances of Puck and Titania, both of whom are played by adults, “it didn’t seem right to just have them walk onstage,” she said.

This time around she’s kept the flying technology simple. That Ms. Taymor has included flying at all in the production, which was scheduled to begin performances Oct. 19 at the brand-new Brooklyn home of Theater for a New Audience, suggests that she is undaunted by her experience on “Spider-Man.” But for her first foray back into New York theater since, she has chosen the embrace of the familiar, working with her close friend Jeffrey Horowitz, the theater’s founding artistic director, with whom she first collaborated almost 30 years ago.

And rehearsals at the new Polonsky Shakespeare Center felt, at times, like a family affair: Her niece, Danya Taymor, a young director, is serving as assistant director, and Ms. Taymor’s partner, and frequent collaborator, Elliot Goldenthal wrote the music. Even their dog, a docile Havanese named Luna, made an appearance, sitting on Ms. Taymor’s lap.

The size of the production, the intimacy of the team — it’s all a far cry from “Spider-Man,” a collaboration that ended in such legal acrimony that Ms. Taymor is loath to speak its title, and in a Shakespearean touch, often refers to it as “that other show.”

Technically ambitious and at $75 million, the most expensive show ever produced on Broadway, “Spider-Man” was savaged by critics who reviewed it during its frequently extended run of previews. Soon after Ms. Taymor was pushed aside, and the producers remounted the show with another director and a retooled script. Ms. Taymor responded by suing, with a court filing that included e-mails suggesting that her collaborators — the composers Bono and the Edge of U2, and her co-author on the book, Glen Berger — colluded behind her back. (Following a countersuit by the producers, both sides settled. In a statement this week, the producers said: “We took the necessary actions to right the ship and audiences have made clear our decision was the correct one.”)

If Ms. Taymor had learned one thing from her experience on “Spider-Man,” she said, it was this: “Everything is about who you work with. And do you know them, and do they want to do what you want to do?”

Working with Mr. Horowitz, a producer she trusts, has been assuring as she heads into previews; even more than that, she takes comfort in the unassailability of the play itself. “People aren’t going to come in and say, ‘The script needs work.’ ” She laughed, stating the obvious: “The script works.”

Less than two weeks before the previews began, Ms. Taymor strode into the Polonsky Center, grinning and almost giddy. “It’s going to be clunky,” she said of the first run-through, but it sounded like more of a promise than a worry. Now 60, she looks unnervingly young for her age, a phenomenon that seems somehow tied to the enduring passion she clearly still feels for theater. When the first act’s music turned fast, she bounced up and down in her seat, composing with her hand; as the actors spoke, she mouthed the words with them, her face shifting from one exaggerated emotion to another.

“I know I do that,” she said afterward. “It’s embarrassing.”

In her concept for “Midsummer,” 17 children, ages 7 to 16, play fairy figures, whom she calls the “rude elementals,” representations of raw, natural energy: sometimes trees, sometimes animals, sometimes children. In one scene, several children roll like logs, impeding the progress of Demetrius, one of the play’s four bedeviled lovers. During the run-through, Zach Appelman, who plays Demetrius, accidentally tripped over one of the children.